Dans le noir

Its brilliance lies in its simplicity. Lights out doesn't attempt to confuse anyone, nor does it look to introduce a totally original idea. Instead, it boldly and unambiguously taunts the audience with the message, "you were all afraid of the dark as kids and most of you still are."

Never has a scary movie villain had such an easy foil—light. Literally any kind of light—sun, fluorescent, bright. They each work perfectly well. Shine any sort of light in the direction of this movie's monster and she disappears. Poof. She's gone and everyone is safe. Writing this, I recognize that this doesn't sound even the tiniest bit scary. Yet somehow, as I sat in my well-lit house after watching the movie, I felt afraid.

A brief telling of the plot: there's a monster-demon-ghost-girl named Diana that lives only in darkness because light hurts her, and sometimes she kills people. She haunts other people in the movie who try to not be killed by her and also they try to defeat her. That's really all there is to know. Yes, it's a very simple plot, but still an enjoyable one, at least in this instance.

Something about the beautiful simplicity of the scare tactics just worked. Nothing confusing, nothing shocking. There weren't even very many classic hanging suspense moments interrupted by loud, jolt scares. These we textbook jump scares. A seemingly safe moment with normal amounts of sound that slowly drifts to silence then POW! A jump scare.

You may be thinking, "this sounds lame. How does this brutally basic approach yields effective scares?" Great question, my astute and thoughtful reader.

I've thought about this question and come up with a few explanations. First, we owe a tremendous credit to the actress who played Diana (Alicia Vela-Baley). Her intimidating posture and sickly contorting and Freddy Kruegerish flailing arms bring to life a terrifying character, whose mere presence on screen is enough to leave viewers unsettled. There's something about crouching, and Vela-Baley is great at it. Seeing a person crouch in a well-lit area is comical. But looking at a crouching figure in the shadows, that will make your skin crawl. The other explanation that I will offer is the visceral nature of the scares. Much of the movie takes place in the dark and the dark is scary. We are evolutionarily predispositioned to fear the dark. It's a survival instinct. Don't argue with me on this. I'm right.

Anyway, the dimly-lit, shadowy settings are the perfect playground for visceral and pure jump scares. Director David F. Sandberg hits all the right beats in framing and lurking camera movement to maximize this simple and smart approach.

So, that's it. If you can't stand jump scares or scary movies, don't see Lights Out. Honestly, I'm not sure why you're even reading this review if you don't like scary movies. If you do like jump scares and scary movies, watch Lights Out. And maybe buy a couple extra lightbulbs or a nightlight before you do.

This is the full length film that all horror fans waiting for after watch short movie at YouTube.

Great storyline and great acting from al cast.

The atmosphere is there and wayyy to many jump scare plot.

In the film, a young woman must confront her childhood fears to protect her brother from a vengeful supernatural entity holding a mysterious attachment to their mother.

In a textile factory during closing hours, an employee named Esther encounters a silhouette of a strange woman with claw-like hands when the lights are off, but cannot see it when the lights are on. After she leaves, her boss Paul encounters the woman and tries to run away, but he is killed.

You guys need to watch this.

After the short film's success, Sandberg announced a film adaptation based on his short film.

Really recommended. Enjoy and entertaining movie.

Lights Out takes some queues from Japanese-styled ghost stories, so it will be attractive to that audience. It has a strong chill-factor but a somewhat average formula, and it could have used fewer back-story explanations to make it more mysterious, especially since those elements did not feel original.

Based on chill factor alone, it ranks higher than Dark Water, The Forest, Paranormal Activity, The Others, The Babadook, and The Boy, and lower than The Ring, Ju-On / The Grudge, and other Japanese-styled ghost stories, as well as any horror James Wan himself directs. Comparing it to masterpieces like The Exorcist and Poltergeist has no value.

I would say its chills rank somewhat evenly with The Woman in Black and It Follows, without being as original as the latter.

The ghost itself is creepy enough, but the overall movie didn't have the creative twists that we enjoyed from movies like The Boy, The Others, The Sixth Sense, and 10 Cloverfield Lane. It also didn't have the storytelling chemistry of James Wan's own Insideous or The Conjuring movies.

I am a fairly difficult person to frighten. I have been seeing horror movies at the theater since the 70's, and I am usually only interested in the ones that have a supernatural or fantastical element to them. So I am very critical of them, and the only ones I collect on disc are either fun (Tremors), scary (the Grudge), or both (An American Werewolf in London). I will collect this one.

Ghost stories are done to death. It is very difficult to come out with anything scary that is original. I think Lights Out could have used the guided hand of a third-party master horror writer, mostly revising the back-story revelations and using the character relationships to build suspense and mystery surrounding what is going on. Then, perhaps working up to a punch line at the end so that suddenly the back- story rushes in on the audience in one moment, with one simple revelation. It is very difficult to think of how that can be done, but other movies have done it, and the payoff is huge.

I think Lights Out tried to do that a little but got confusing in the attempt.

But all-in-all it's a nice little scary movie with a smaller production value but a satisfying ghost.

If you want to make it in Hollywood's horror industry nowadays, you have to make a scarily good short movie with one terrific idea and a handful of spooky images, and then simply hope that it'll go viral on the internet. If it works, influential producers will undoubtedly offer you a big sum of money to turn the short into a full-feature film and, with a bit of luck, your career is launched. It worked for Andy Muschietti with "Mama", and now he's helming the massively popular "It" remakes. It even worked for James Wan in 2003 already, with "Saw", and he's now so successful that he can act as influential producer to launch the careers of new arrivals, like he did for David F. Sandberg and his splendid "Lights Out".

I'm honestly happy to state that "Lights Out" is - at least in my own personal and humble opinion - the first mainstream horror movie in a very long time that is truly good and genuinely frightening. As cliched as it might sound, "Lights Out" is the type of fresh new film that restores hope and faith in in the horror genre for old and narrowly cynical fans like myself. The story is simple but highly effective, the lead characters are sympathetic and identifiable for a change, and the special effects (or even the lack thereof) definitely rank the most unnerving ones of the decade. Yes, it's another tale of an eerie ghost terrorizing a poor family, and admittedly several of the jump-scare moments are foreseeable, but the Diana character is authentically nightmarish and for me it was quite exceptional that I hoped for all these likable lead characters to survive instead of to die a quick & painfully.

It wasn't until I checked the credits that I realized this was based off of the short film by David F. Sandberg. I knew the lights off/lights on shadow figure thing seemed familiar. While I really loved the short film, I don't necessarily agree that it needed the full length treatment. I feel like we see this a lot - capitalize off some popular internet thing that, when extended, loses some of what made it special in the first place. The short film was unsettling and creepy as it was; giving it a back story and more detail made it feel cheapened. I'm not a huge fan of "BOO!" gotcha horror movies, though; I come from a generation that was raised on the original Halloween and, for me, that is the apex of subtle, creepy, slow burn etc - everything that makes one get enveloped in a movie. When there are two many jump-atchas, it is jarring and does not make for high replay value (for me, anyway). I thought the mental asylum backstory was so played out; I feel like maybe that trope should be burned alive. We get it. Although that's kind of how I also feel about kids being creepy (or "troubled"), too. There's just so little variation in horror these days. Not all bad, though - I feel like the choice of Teresa Palmer as Maria Bello (Sophie)'s character's daughter was a fantastic choice. I not only enjoyed her performance but I feel she looks the part; she looks like a younger version of her.